President Trump’s discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding the creation of safe areas or de-confliction zones in Syria won’t require an expansion of the U.S. troop presence there, Pentagon officials say.
“I am not aware of any plan that would put more U.S. boots on the ground,” said one military official.
U.S. troops are already serving in a quasi-peacekeeping role, patrolling areas in Syria where rival factions might otherwise be fighting among themselves.
“Generally, what we find is that, if our forces are there, there’s no firing,” said Col. John Dorrian, a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. “The forces that are there are not really forces that anyone would want to get into an exchange of fire with.”
But Dorrian said the U.S. has only a small number of troops in Syria, roughly 500, not nearly enough to enforce safe zones.
“I’m not going to speculate about what we might do. I think, for now, what we’ll do is we’ll continue to observe and report what’s happening in the area,” Dorrian said. “Largely, you know, the presence of the force there seems to be a stabilizing presence.”
The U.S. troops in Syria have a mission to advise and assist partner forces and are supposed to avoid direct combat, except in self-defense.
Lately, they have also been used in a presence mission to keep the focus on fighting the Islamic State.
“We have continued our partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces, and they’ve proven very reliable in keeping their guns trained on ISIS,” Dorrian said. “And that’s something that we expect to continue.”
Two senior defense officials said the Pentagon has not been tasked with any planning involving de-confliction zones.
“It doesn’t involve us,” one official said, explaining the areas proposed by Russia were all in the west, where regime forces are battling rebels.
“Our only mission to defeat ISIS, we’re not involved in the civil war,” the official said.
Another official suggested that the zones under consideration would be something worked out in Russian-backed peace talks set for this week in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana.
